A Night to Remember

From Great North Road

By Philip Pain.

More Growing up in Nkana-Kitwe: October 24th 1964

At the start of the school holidays at around August/September 1964 my parents had booked train tickets to South Africa for a holiday and going with us was my friend Iggy Liebenburg. This was to be a great adventure for Iggy and myself as we were both sixteen and rearing to get to Durban.

About a week before we were to depart, there was a strike by the Rhodesian Railways and all rail transport came to a standstill. Well you can imagine the tremendous disappointment that Iggy and I were experiencing.

On the 22nd of August My brother Arnold and Maggie got married and after the wedding Iggy and I were sulking about our fate, when Iggy's brother Zack offered to drive us down to Johannesburg from where we could catch the train to Durban. Within an hour we were ready, packed and ready to roll.

Zack owned a Volvo B1800 Hunch back, left hand drive. Going through my old British Northern Rhodesia passport, we passed through Chirundu on the 22nd of August and Beit Bridge on the 23rd. and if I remember correctly it took us about eighteen hours from Kitwe to Johannesburg. (Boy! Could that Volvo fly?)

Iggy and I had a fantastic holiday in Durban where we stayed with my sister and brother in-law. They had left Garneton a few years earlier and had built a house in the new suburb of Yellow Wood Park.

In the meantime my parents had to wait for the strike to end before they could start their holiday and by the time they arrived it was time for Iggy and I to return home.

The return journey from Durban to Nkana by train was another adventure for two sixteen year olds. Again checking my passport we passed through immigration at Bulawayo on the 18th Sept. 1964 and on the 19th through Livingstone.

Now while we were away Arnold and Maggie were looking after our house in 4th Avenue and when I arrived home my "Boet" asked me to look after their flat in Galway Avenue. (I think he just wanted me out of the way of the newly weds.) Now this was right up my street. Sixteen and your own pad!!!!! (Arnold later made me go and apologies to his next door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Mars for the noise from the loud music and the 50cc. (Mr. Mars ran or owned the Astra cinema.) Arnold's words later during the reprimand were, "you guys do what you want to, just keep it down." (What a brother?)

As my parents only took leave every second year and took their accumulated leave package, they were away when Zambia became INDEPENDANT.

Earlier during the evening of the 24th my mates and I had been into Edinburgh Road and helped ourselves to many of the banners that were hanging from the lamp posts. These later became curtains in my first flat in Pretoria when I became an Appie at ISCOR.

It was about 11.00pm while watching T.V. and after all my friends had left that I heard a noise from the North of Kitwe stream. There was this roar, but distant and I decided to go and investigate. The flat was the second property from the corner of Edinburgh Rd. and Galway and when I got to the intersection and looked towards Llewellyn Hospital there were thousands of black people coming down the road chanting.

As I stood there and they were getting closer and closer, I realized that they were breaking all the branches off all the trees they could reach and waving them in the air and making a terrible noise.

Well! As a sixteen year old you might think you are MACHO. But I want to tell all of you that my mind suddenly filled with all the stories of the Mau-Mau's and more recently the Congo and decided that I must find a place to hide if things got nasty.

Going back to the flat I decided that the best place to be was on the roof of the verandah, this was flat and made of concrete it also had a parapet behind which I could hide. I quickly found my way up and laid there until the masses had passed by, heart thumping and expecting the worst. (I could see them from the roof)

The next morning when I went to have a look at where they had passed by, I could not believe the devastation of one of the most beautiful avenues in Kitwe, trees and shrubs destroyed, anything that could be broken was broken... AFRICA!

A night to remember.

Cheers